Here We All Are Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PUFFIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000 Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  Copyright © Tomie dePaola, 2000

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  dePaola, Tomie. Here we all are / written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.

  p. cm.-/A 26 Fairmount Avenue Book)

  Summary: Children’s author-illustrator Tomie dePaola describes his

  experiences at home and in school when he was a boy.

  1. dePaola, Tomie—Childhood and youth—Juvenile literature. 2. dePaola,

  Tomie—Homes and haunts—Connecticut—Meriden—Juvenile literature.

  3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography—Juvenile literature.

  4. Meriden (Conn.)—Social Life and Customs—Juvenile literature.

  5. Meriden (Conn.)—Biography—Juvenile literature.

  [1. dePaola, Tomie—Childhood and youth. 2. Authors, American.

  3. Illustrators.] I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3554.E11474Z’.54—dc21 [B] 99-046747

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07677-4

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my sister Maureen and her family—

  and my sister Judie.

  I promise she’ll “appear” in

  one of these books.

  Chapter One

  Have you ever moved into a new house? A whole house with a basement, a first floor, a second floor, and an attic? Well, when we moved from an apartment to our new house—our very first house—it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. At least up until then.

  Here I was, standing in 26 Fairmount Avenue. I ran up the stairs and down, into the living room, the dining room, and all the bedrooms, all the way up to the attic and down to the basement. Then I ran up and down all over again.

  Everything in 26 Fairmount Avenue was new! Well—almost everything.

  “Nothing but the best for our new house!” Dad said.

  “Our own house at last!” Mom said.

  Our living room had a real fireplace. I tried sitting in the blue easy chair in front of it. The chair came with an ottoman-a big footstool to rest your feet on. But my legs were too short to reach it.

  I looked up at the picture of a mountain at sunset that hung over the sofa. My dad’s cousin had painted it and given it to us for our new house.

  “What an artistic family,” the neighbors would say when they came to visit. “So much talent!” My mom’s cousin was Morton Downey, the famous Irish tenor. My Irish cousins, the McLaughlin twins, were going to Pratt Institute, the famous art school in Brooklyn, New York. And there was the painter of the mountain, our Italian cousin, Anna.

  The dining room was very fancy! We never ate there except for birthday parties and Special Occasions. Mom told us that every Christmas we would set out the Christmas village on top of the built-in sideboard. Then she opened the bottom drawer and showed us the Baby Book.

  My brother Buddy and I each had pages with important facts written on them—our birthdays, how much we weighed when we were born, when we took our first steps, said our first words. Curls from our first haircuts were in a little pocket on a page. Even though Buddy and I had brown hair now, our baby curls were blond. Buddy’s curl was almost white.

  I checked to make sure there were lots of pages in case we had any sisters. I already had a brother, and who needed two of those!

  Mom loved her new gas stove in the kitchen. It had a clock, a timer, and places for salt and pepper shakers at the back, behind the burners. You set the dial for the oven to the right temperature, then turned it on and hoped it would light on its own. If it didn‘t, you had to put a burning match into a small space and light the gas. It made a whoosh sound when it lit.

  Of course I wasn’t allowed to light anything. There were stories about the lady who was too close and not fast enough with the match, and her eyebrows and eyelashes were burned right off! I really think it was just a story to keep kids from touching the stove. But it worked.

  We didn’t have a new refrigerator, though. Mom and Dad liked the old “monitor top” one. It had a big, round drum on the top,which was the motor.

  “This thing makes the fastest ice cubes in Meriden,” Dad said.

  Mom and Dad had new furniture in their bedroom. Mom had a fancy table called a “vanity,” where she sat in front of a mirror on a little stool with a cushion and ruffles.

  Mom would sit there to brush her hair and put on her lipstick. “This makes me feel silly,” she said. “I’m not a movie star.”

  One day when no one was around, I sat there and put on my mother’s lipstick, pretending to be Miss Mae West. She was my favorite movie star. When I tried to wash the lipstick off, I couldn’t. So I got caught. I had bright-red lips for a few days!

  Buddy and I had new furniture in our room, too—matching twin beds and a bureau with six drawers. I had the bottom three drawers because I was shorter.

  “Your furniture is genuine maple,” Mom told us. Maple?

  When no one was looking, I licked the bedpost to see if it tasted like maple syrup or the maple candies we got sometimes. It didn’t.

  The bathroom, which was upstairs, was very special.

  Before we moved in, my dad had told me there would be a laundry chute in the bathroom. It was to send the clothes, towels, and sheets that needed washing down to the basement, where the washing machine was. I was excited because in the movies I had seen people slide down curving chutes and land in piles of laundry. No such luck! Our laundry chute went straight down.

  The bathroom had a real shower, but after just one shower, I wasn’t allowed to use it. Something about getting water all over the floor and its dripping downstairs into the kitchen.

  “Baths only for Tomie until he gets older,” Dad said, mopping up the mess.

  The bathroom was pink, black, and white. A band of white and then black tiles went halfway up the walls. The rest of the walls were painted pink.

  I heard Mrs. Crane tell Mom, “Oh, Floss, you have such good taste. And you always have the latest things.”

  “I’m planning on putting up decals, too,” Mom said.

  “What are decals?” I asked. Mom explained that decals were pictures on paper. You soaked the paper in water and put the decal where you wanted it, rubbed gently with a cloth, then peeled off the paper backing, and there was the picture on the wall, the bed, or the bureau, wherever you had put it.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go down to Woolworth’s and pick some out,” Mom said. Woolworth’s was the five- and ten-cent store and had everything!

  Mom came to get me after kindergarten the next day and we went shopping. We looked through the decal book in the back of Woolworth’s. I was getting all kinds of ideas. I looked at fruits and vegetables that had faces and a
rms and dancing legs, plain vegetables, and puppies and kittens and butterflies. I thought the dancing vegetables would look good in the kitchen.

  But the sailboats and lighthouses and seashells would be great in the bedroom I shared with Buddy. The mirror over our bureau looked like a ship’s wheel. Uncle Charles said it was “nautical,” so seashore designs were perfect.

  “I don’t think so,” Mom said. “Not on all that brand-new furniture!”

  Mom picked out decals with black swans and white swans and water lilies for the bathroom.

  Then she surprised me. “Now, Tomie,” she said, “let’s look at decals for the baby’s room.”

  “Baby’s room?” I said.

  “Yes.” Mom smiled. “You know the little room that we said would be a baby’s room just in case? Well, we’re going to need it, because we’re going to have a new baby in the family. Decals will make your old crib look nicer.”

  A sister! I thought. I couldn’t wait.

  “When will she get here?” I asked.

  “She?” Mom said. “We don’t know if it will be a new brother or a sister. You’ll have to wait a little while, because it takes time for babies to be born.”

  Now that was going to be hard—even harder than waiting to move into 26 Fairmount Avenue.

  When we got home, I ran right up the stairs and stood in the little “just-in-case” room.

  “Please, please, please, Jesus, I want a baby sister,” I prayed.

  Chapter Two

  We had only been in 26 Fairmount Avenue for a week when the Christmas vacation ended. It was time to go back to school.

  I met my best friend, Jeannie Houdlette, at the corner. She lived just around the corner at 210 Highland Avenue. Her house was new, too. Now we could walk to school and back home together.

  On the way we passed our old apartment on Columbus Avenue. No one had moved in yet. It was funny to see dark, empty windows without any curtains.

  Carol Crane came running up to walk to school with us. She was older than I was, but younger than Buddy. She told me that her mom especially missed the Holy Water my mom would sprinkle on Mrs. Crane during thunderstorms so lightning wouldn’t strike.

  As soon as we got to our classroom, I went right up to my kindergarten teacher, Miss Immick, and told her that I had a new address.

  “Well, aren’t we a lucky boy,” Miss Immick said. “Now you and Jeannie are neighbors.”

  Then Miss Immick clapped her hands to get our attention. “Boys and girls, today we are going to have a painting class.”

  That was great news for me. A whole year before, when I was only four, the relatives had asked Buddy if he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Buddy said he wanted to be Dick Tracy or Joe Palooka or Buck Rogers. (Dick Tracy was a detective. Joe Palooka was a prizefighter. Buck Rogers was a spaceman. All three of them were comic-book characters. It sounded as if Buddy wanted to be a comic strip!)

  “I know what I want to be,” I had yelled out. And I did, too. “I want to be an artist when I grow up. I want to draw pictures and write stories for books and sing and tap dance on the stage.”

  I don’t know if the other relatives believed me or not, but Mom and Dad, Uncle Charles, and my grandfather, Tom, all did. On my birthday and at Christmas, they gave me art supplies—paper, pencils, and crayons—and Mom took me to Miss Leah’s Dancing School.

  The only trouble about painting at school was Miss Immick’s paint. She made it by pouring different colored powders into big glass jars and mixing them with water. The paint made the paper all wavy. When the picture dried, the paint rubbed right off.

  Today Miss Immick made all the colors. Then she put a brush in each jar.

  Then she said, “Now, boys and girls, we have to share, so let’s be careful. Be sure to put the right brush back in the right jar of paint.” She divided us into small groups. Little easels were set up all around the room. We put on old shirts of our fathers‘, or old aprons of our mothers’, so we wouldn’t get too dirty.

  At least Miss Immick let us paint anything we wanted to, even if her paint wasn’t so great. But sometimes she made suggestions.

  Today she said, “I think if we all paint a nice scene with a tree and a house and the sun and some clouds that would be really nice.”

  I decided to paint a different picture, maybe a mountain like the one in the painting Cousin Anna did for our house.

  Everything was going fine until someone in my group put the red brush in the green paint. Red and green are opposite each other on the color wheel. That means that when they are mixed together, they make a dirty, ugly brown color that looks like mud.

  Great—now I’d have a hard time making my green mountain. I went over to Jeannie’s group to borrow their green brush.

  “We must stay in our groups,” Miss Immick said.

  “I’m just going to borrow the green brush for a minute,” I told Miss Immick. I explained what had happened in my group with the red brush and the green paint.

  “You know, Miss Immick, since I am going to be an artist when I grow up, I think it would be nice if I had my own paints and some better paper.”

  I know Miss Immick didn’t think this was a good idea, because she just pointed at my easel and said, “Just go and finish your picture, young man. ”

  That’s why I had a picture of a muddy brown mountain in the rain instead of a beautiful green one in the sun to take home.

  Chapter Three

  Every afternoon in kindergarten we had to take “our naps.” Everyone had his or her own little rug, or “mat,” as Miss Immick called it.

  The mats had big cardboard tags with our first names printed on them. If you had the same first name as someone else, Miss Immick put the first letter of your last name on the tag, too.

  I don’t think Miss Immick liked nicknames very much, because Johnny Gregory was John G. and Jack Rule was John R. and Jeannie Houdlette was Jean H.

  Even though I was the only Tomie, guess what? I wasn’t allowed to spell my name T-O-M-I-E. I had to be T-0-M-M-Y. Miss Immick told me that T O-M-I-E was the wrong spelling.

  “But, Miss Immick, you say it exactly the same way,” I had explained. Then I told Miss Immick that my mom’s famous cousin, the Irish tenor Morton Downey, had given me the spelling of my name when I was just a little boy.

  My mom had told Cousin Morton that I was sure to be famous when I grew up because I could draw really well and sing and dance, too. When I was three I had turned my sandbox over and used it as a stage. I danced even though I hadn’t been to Miss Leah’s Dancing School yet.

  I knew all the words to the songs from movies starring Miss Mae West and Shirley Temple.

  “Well, then, Floss,” Cousin Morton said to my mom, “he’s got to have an unusual spelling for his first name so people will remember it!”

  “I don’t care what your mother’s famous cousin said,” Miss Immick told me. “You should just be thankful that I don’t call you Thomas. Now go and sit down. ”

  For the next seven years I had to spell my name T-O-M-M-Y, even though my name was spelled T O-M-I-E.

  Anyway, this day when it was time for “naps,” I thought I’d be helpful. I picked up Jack Rule’s mat to hand to him. But before I could, Miss Immick said, “Tommy, what are you doing!? You know you must never use any mat but your own.”

  We had that rule so we wouldn’t get cooties, which are little bugs that can get in your hair. If you did get them, you wouldn’t pass them on to anyone if you used your own mat every day. (If you did get them, it was awful because your mother had to scrub your hair with a special soap that made your whole head feel as if it was burning.) Every once in a while we had to take the mats home so our mothers could wash them.

  “I was just being polite and handing Jack his mat,” I explained. “In church on Sunday Father O‘Connell said we should help each other.”

  “Well, all right, but don’t do it again, ” Miss Immick told me.

  I hated “naps.” I want
ed to be up and doing things. Gee, we could have used nap-time to learn how to read instead of waiting until first grade. I would lie there with my eyes wide open, thinking.

  The next day I decided that it would be a good time to practice a new song I had learned. So, very quietly, I started singing to myself.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up. Miss Immick had her finger to her lips. She wanted me to be quiet. Then she motioned for me to get up and follow her out of the room.

  We went to Miss Luby’s office. Miss Luby was the school nurse. Miss Immick had me sit on the cot where you rested when you were sick.

  “Tommy, what am I going to do with you?” Miss Immick said. “Why can’t you be a good boy like your brother, Joseph?” (She didn’t even call him Buddy.) “Now, I want you to promise me that you will try to behave. And not talk so much.”

  “I’ll try, Miss Immick.” But I knew it wouldn’t be easy with all those rules.

  Chapter Four

  I wished that school with Miss Immick could be like school with Miss Leah.

  I had started dancing school in September and I loved it.

  My mom had taken me there the year before, when I was four. But it hadn’t worked out.

  “What kind of dancing do you like to do?” Miss Leah had asked.

  “Tap dancing—like Shirley Temple,” I answered.

  “How old are you?”

  “I just turned four.”

  “Well, I usually have children wait until they’re five before they take tap,” Miss Leah said, “but let’s see what you can do.”